The next San Diego Chargers home game is just a few days away, are you ready? By which we mean, is your generator ready? How about your deep-fryer? Your football-helmet dip-and-chip holder? Your flat-screen TV? Your nine flat-screen TVs?

As the faithful know and newbies can’t begin to fathom, home-game fun starts long before kickoff in a magical land known as Tailgate Country, where the beer is cold, the stuffed jalapeños are blistering and the fans are totally off their satellite-dish equipped rockers.

What does it take to throw a winning tailgate bash? I dropped in on Qualcomm Stadium before the recent Chargers/Dallas Cowboys game and got the skinny. While the fun went south later in the day when a parking-lot brawl ended in an arrest, my pre-game experience was all about killer barbecue, potent drinks and tons of hospitality. Let the parking lot party begin.

Go big or stay home: They call Steve Martinez “The King of K-1,” not because he parks in K-1 but because of what he parks in K-1. Which would be a Pechanga casino shuttle bus that Martinez remade into the Ultimate Tailgate Machine.

Two satellite dishes. Nine flat-screen televisions attached to the back, each showing a different football game. Also a full menu of themed eats. (In honor of the Cowboys, it was barbecue day.) Along with multiple grills, a fleet of coolers, and plenty of chairs for a crowd. On this particular Sunday, the crowd included Martinez’s wife, his two sons, and a bunch of people he didn’t know. But not strangers. Never strangers.

“I went to a game in Green Bay a few years ago, and I met a guy with this great van,” said Martinez, a Redlands accountant and longtime Chargers season ticket holder. “He gave me a tour and offered me food and drinks, and I thought, ‘This is what I want. I want people to be able to get off the trolley and watch the game with us. I don’t care who they are.’ ”

Bring the family: Just outside Gate H on a prime piece of people-watching real estate, the Dorantes Compound beckoned. There were three inflatable football players and a beanbag-toss game. There were hot dogs and every kind of chip. There was a grill full of Staci Bevell’s cheese-stuffed jalapeño poppers, which tasted like heaven and kicked like the devil. And there was the team spirit of Marie and Oscar Dorantes and the friends from their San Marcos neighborhood, who met when their kids played baseball together and went on to turn football-worship into a multifamily affair.

And as you might expect from people who travel with Chargers inflatables, the San Marcos gang couldn’t let a visitor go without a plate of poppers and some tailgate advice.

“Don’t get here late,” Marie said.

From her spot by the grill, Stacy Pauley added, “And don’t go home hungry.”

Here's schnapps in your eye: After more than a quarter century of practice, Robert Flynt and his fellow Navy retirees have learned how to throw a tailgate party for the ages. All it takes is three motor homes, two deep-fryers, a few grills and the combined culinary efforts of 35 or so fish-frying, hot-links grilling, peach-cobbler making super-fans. Also neon-colored plastic shot glasses filled with Patrón tequila or a sinfully tasty concoction made of Bailey’s Irish Cream and butterscotch schnapps whose racy name we can’t mention here.